In what concerns the effects that dehydration during the decomposition process on the one hand and malnutrition on the other had on fuel requirements, Mattogno (p. 1384) takes issue with the following statement on pp. 469f. of the critique, conveniently leaving out the first sentence (highlighted below) from his quote:

In the later stages of the decomposition process, butyric fermentation and dry decay, a corpse is left without most, and finally without all, of the water that makes up most of the human organism. One would expect this to positively influence external fuel requirements in two respects, one being the much lower mass to be burned and the other that little or no heat is expended in evaporating body water. This assumption is supported by evidence whereby at Treblinka extermination camp corpses removed from the graves required less fuel for burning than fresh corpses.

My expectation regarding the loss of mass "makes no sense", according to Mattogno, "because it has to be specified first what the cause of this lower mass was". Which was just what I did in the sentence that Mattogno purposefully omitted, from which it becomes apparent that the loss of mass comes from the loss of water (which, as I pointed out in a related footnote, makes up 61.8 percent of a human body’s weight). Thus Mattogno’s objection is not exactly pertinent.

My source for the lesser fuel consumption being Arad[149], Mattogno makes a fuss about my referring to Arad "as if Arad had reported experimental data instead of mere babblings" (the vulgar language aside, this is a false dilemma as it doesn’t necessarily require "experimental data" to establish facts or phenomena, at least outside Mattogno’s world), then argues that "Arad doesn’t even mention the witnesses said to have given such statements" and that his account "contradicts testimonial evidence as well as objective facts" (as if objective facts could not be established on hand of testimonial evidence).

The testimonial evidence Mattogno uses in support of his argument, again conveniently cherrypicking snippets from a testimony he otherwise dismisses as wholly unreliable, is that of Leon Weliczker, who he quotes in Polish after an account by this witness published in 1946[150], and translates as follows:

This depends also on whether the corpses are decayed. If they are decayed, they burn less well. In any case, the difference in time needed for the cremation of a pile of decayed corpses and one of fresh corpses amounts to one day.

Jens Hoffmann provides the following text in German, translated from an English-language publication of Weliczker’s account[151]:

How long such a pyre burns depends on whether the corpses are clothed or naked. Clothed corpses burn more slowly. In the same sense the progressing decomposition has an impact. Fresh corpses burn faster than already decomposing ones, whose burning takes up to one day longer.

The term "already decomposing ones" suggests that Weliczker is referring to the initial stages of the decomposition process, not to the later stages in which the corpses is dessicated. Even so it is hard to understand why corpses in the initial stages of the decomposition process should burn more slowly than fresh ones, as it seems counterintuitive that clothing should prolong instead of shorten the cremation process[152]. So these claims suggest some confusion in the witness’s recollections, like Weliczker’s claim that the corpses he carried had weighed 70-80 kg. [153] At least as concerns corpses in the advanced, dessicated stages of decomposition (which were the ones I was referring to), Mattogno seems to agree with Arad’s description, for he states on p. 1411 that "charred corpses burn with more difficulty than fresh ones, but dried corpses more easily". As to Arad, it is true that his above-quoted descriptions are not accompanied by footnotes leading to sourcenotes, but that doesn’t mean that Arad invented these descriptions. Chil Rajchman observed the phenomenon described by Arad: [154]

It turns out that the corpses dug out of the pits burn even better than those of recently gassed people.

According to Mattogno in MGK’s Sobibór book[155], the effect on wood consumption of a corpse's complete dessication, which according to his calculations would save ca. 37,800 kcal in external energy, would be offset by "a loss of, say, 40% of body fat and 12% of proteins", so that burning a corpse with all of its water, fat and proteins would take the same amount of wood as burning a corpse that has no water, 60 % of its fat and 88 % of its proteins. In the critique I objected that this cannot be so considering the latter corpse’s much lower mass and much higher energy value per weight unit, and provided the following tables on p. 471:

Table 2.5 – Tables 8.5 and 8.6 of the critique (p. 471)

It defies common sense that cremating a corpse weighing only 17.14 kg, of which 29.41% are fat, 47.14% are proteins and 23.46% are other substances, and which has an energy value per weight unit of 5,339.08 kcal/kg, should require the same amount of wood as cremating a corpse weighing 60 kg, of which 64 % are water, 14 % are fat, 15.30 % are proteins and 6.7 % are other substances, and which has an energy value per weight unit of only 1,525.16 kcal/kg. Yet this is exactly what Mattogno claims on p. 1386 of the magnum opus, on grounds that "a human body of 60 kg and one of 17.14 kg have an almost identical positive balance: 91,509.60 against 91,503.36 kcal", which is supposed to mean that "in both cases the cremation of the corpse requires roughly the same energy provided by the combustible material".

While it is easy to understand why considerable additional energy provided by the combustible material is required in the former case (mainly to evaporate the water, as a precondition for the combustible parts of the body to start combusting), what would the same amount of external energy be required for in the latter case, where there is no water to be evaporated? Maybe the combustion of the remaining protein needs some extra energy, but the amount thereof would be very low in comparison with the amount required in the former case to evaporate the water, which in the latter case is no longer there. So Mattogno’s postulate makes no sense. But Mattogno insists on it. Proclaiming the sum of energy provided by the body and energy provided by the external combustible material to be a fixed value that must be reached for combustion to take place, Mattogno produces the following calculation:

whereby, if the burning of a corpse weighing 60 kg, thereof 64 % water, requires wood 33.6 kg of wood at a ratio of 0.56 kg per kg, the burning of a corpse weighing 17.14 kg, thereof 0 % water, requires the same 33.6 of wood at a ratio of 1.96 kg per kg. In other words, the amount of wood per kg of corpse would be 3.5 times higher, even though the corpse weighing 17.14 kg has an energy value per weight unit that is not lower, but (5,339.08 ÷ 1,525.16 =) 3.5 times higher than that of the corpse weighing 60 kg. By Mattogno’s reasoning, if the second corpse weighed only 1 kg and thus produced only ca. 5,339 kcal of energy, burning it would require (219,200 – 5,339 =) 213,861 kcal, corresponding to (213,861 ÷ 3,800 =) ca. 56 kg of wood.

In the real world, a dessicated corpse with an energy value of 5,339.08 kcal/kg[156] will burn on its own once it has been set on fire, which requires only relatively modest amounts of kindling wood and/or a liquid accelerant, as can be seen in an online video[157]. The burning of carcasses reduced to their bones also requires modest amounts of fuel, according to my reading of a technical report I had referred to in note 132 on p. 471 of the critique, about a procedure adopted in Argentina whereby a carcass is disinfected, covered with a polyethylene sheet and left lying until only the bones are left, which are then burned. [158] Mattogno calls this reading "an arbitrary speculative addition on the part of Muehlenkamp, that is, a lie", on grounds that the amount of combustible required to burn the bones is not specified in the report, but in yet another projection of one of his habits overlooked the list of material required for the "inactivation of the cover", i.e. the burning of the bones: "5000 c.c. of diesel fuel" and "Safety matches". As the list of materials required mentioned no fuel beyond these 5 liters of diesel, I understood the "more fuel" mentioned in the deactivation instructions as being included in the 5 liters of diesel, a part of which was to be poured into the openings before ignition while the rest was to be added later until combustion was complete. To be sure, the text is formulated in a manner that could also lead to another interpretation, but as no fuel beyond those 5 liters of diesel is mentioned in the list of materials required, I don’t consider my interpretation to be far-fetched. It seems to also have been the interpretation of the reader whose description of the procedure pointed me to the aforementioned technical report[159], who wrote that "Over 240-260 days the carcass decomposes. They then burn off the tarpauline and the remaining bones and grease using 5 L of diesel."

Further evidence of the high calorific content of bones, and the accordingly low amounts of external fuel required to burn them, comes from an extinct site about disposal methods for various types of waste in Aschaffenburg county, Germany, in which it was stated that bones of animals may be burned in the Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Schweinfurt – a power plant that produces electricity and heating by burning trash and coal – at no expense because bones have about the same heating value as brown coal. [160] Last but not least, there is the message I received on 11 August 2005 from Mr. Norbert Fuhrmann, Sales Manager of Air Burners LLC, Florida, USA, wherein he informed me, among other things, that bones have about the same calorific value as brown coal and therefore the incineration of bones requires much less wood than that of an entire carcass[161].

Mattogno refers to his "previous rebuttal to Muehlenkamp" for what concerns the combustion of bones, but as that "previous rebuttal" has in turn be rebutted in an earlier blog[162], this reference is the equivalent of throwing in the towel on this subject. Apparently in order to conceal this unfavorable outcome, Mattogno precedes the reference to his "previous rebuttal" by changing the subject back to fuel expenditure in burning fresh carcasses, announcing that he "encountered an important piece of information with regard to the combustion of an anthrax carcass", whereby the recommended wood weight to carcass weight ratio is about 4:1. This is indeed the ratio that the recommendations for burning in Mattogno’s source[163] suggest, but what Mattogno doesn’t tell his readers is that the quantities mentioned (100 pounds of straw, 2½ gallons of accelerant and 2 tons of wood or ½ ton of wood and ½ ton of coal) apparently refer not only to the burning of the carcass itself, but also to the burning of soil contaminated by the carcass:

The carcass and all materials associated with it should be destroyed and the ground should be disinfected. This can be very difficult.[…] If blood and body fluids have contaminated the ground and material under the animal, they should be incinerated as well. Remove soil deep enough to collect any blood and body fluids that have seeped into it. This could be up to 6 inches. This material can be placed on top of the carcass prior to igniting the pyre (Figure C).

Moreover the burning method shown in the article’s illustrations, of which Figure C is reproduced on p. 1389 of the magnum opus, corresponds to the least fuel-efficient of Lothes & Profé’s experiments, experiments X and XI described in their 1904 article[164], in which the carcass was placed above-ground directly on combustible material piled up inside a pit, instead of on iron rails or carriers lain across the pit. Yet even in these experiments Lothes & Profé achieved ratios far below the one that follows from the anthrax article, as shown in the table below[165].

The difference between a 4:1 ratio and a ratio of 0.79:1 or 1.54:1, depending on whether the anthrax article refers to quantities of dry or fresh wood (the recommendation to use "railroad ties or pallets" suggests the former) can be partially explained by the requirement to burn contaminated soil along with the carcass, and it is also probable that the authors of the article considered high amounts of fuel to be on the safe side in their recommendations. The main reason for the difference, however, is probably the different degree of combustion meant to be achieved in one and the other case: whereas the anthrax article’s recommendations are meant to achieve a complete reduction to ashes of the carcass, Lothes & Profé, as mentioned above, seem to have considered the burning complete when the carcass was completely carbonized. As also mentioned before, the reduction of corpses to carbonized remains that could be further broken up by post-cremation processing is also likely to have been the objective of cremation at the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps. Carbonized remains so reduced that they could fit into sacks or boxes and transported to cemeteries with the little transport capacity available would also have satisfied the Dresden city administration’s idea of "ash" as a result of the Altmarkt pyres, judging by the remains visible in images 2.4 to 2.6 of this Part 2 – or, for that matter, by the cremation remains visible on some post-liberation photographs of Majdanek[166].

Now back to the burning of decomposed corpses. As "objective facts" supposed to contradict the notion that burning such corpses – at least when in an advanced state of decomposition in which the corpse has lost most of its water – requires proportionally less fuel than burning fresh corpses, Mattogno had presented the burning of 21,000 decomposing carcasses at Epynt in Wales between April 24 and the end of August 2001, arguing that this burning required an amount of fuel and a timeframe far in excess of those that had been observed with fresh carcasses[167]. Yet the related report[168] states several reasons for this, which I quoted on p. 472 of the critique: after a failed attempt to burn them in the burial pit, the carcasses were moved to the burn site "in their deteriorated state, mixed with mud and stones." The pyre temperature was too low for safe burning, for the pyre "was built on the flat with no trench to create the draft usually necessary to ensure high temperatures for burning." Moreover the pyre "was in fact over 400 metres long (whereas according to the EA's report it should have been 250 metres long) and was so wide that the machines used to stoke up the fire could not reach the centre which left much of the carcasses only partly burnt." Those machines caught fire themselves, leading to the use of "fire hydrants alongside the pyres to dowse down burning machines.".

In summarizing these factors, I stated that "the pyre was inadequately wide and didn’t allow for air circulation, which rendered the burning very inefficient". Taking advantage of this unfortunate wording, which suggests that inadequate air circulation was related to the width of the pyre, Mattogno argues that, on the contrary, the airflow was more than sufficient precisely due to the width of the pyre – conveniently overlooking the report’s statement that, due to the absence of a trench to create the draft required to ensure high temperatures, the burning temperature had been too low. He further claims that the fire hydrants, which I assumed to have further lowered burning efficiency, had no impact on the burning as the water they poured on burning machines didn’t reach the pyre, even though the text whereby the machines caught fire as they tried to stoke up the fire suggests otherwise. But Mattogno’s main argument is that, if the corpses were "mixed with mud and stones", the corpses in the Aktion Reinhard(t) mass graves were mixed with huge amounts of sand that would have landed on the pyre, amounts that Mattogno estimates based on his sand-filling trick addressed in my response to the magnum opus’s chapter 11, whereby he tried to fill the mass graves with as much sand as possible (one third or half of the grave filled with sand instead of bodies) by creatively (mis)reading related eyewitness testimonies[169]. One factor that I pointed out as possibly contributing to the disastrous results of the Epynt burning Mattogno doesn’t address at all: the previous failed attempt to burn the carcasses in the burial pit, as their charring would have made a crust that doesn't ignite well[170]. This omission is all the more noteworthy as Mattogno argues on p. 1411 that "charred corpses burn with more difficulty than fresh ones".

Thus Mattogno’s arguments do not change my conclusion that the Epynt burning cannot be used as evidence in support of the counterintuitive proposition that burning decomposed corpses requires more fuel than burning fresh ones.

That said, we now turn to the effect that malnutrition, namely the resulting loss of fat, is likely to have had on fuel requirements. In MGK’s Sobibór book, Mattogno had based his related arguments on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment (November 1944 through December 1945), in which 36 volunteers underwent a restricted diet over 24 weeks and saw their weight dropping from an initial average 69.4 kg in the last week of the control period to 52.6 kg at the end of 24 weeks of semi-starvation, a loss of 16.8 kg of which 6.2 kg were water, 1.5 kg were proteins and 9.1 kg were fat. Mattogno had calculated[171] that "the loss of 6.2 kg of body water saves some 6.2×(640+0.493×700) 6,100 kcal in terms of fuel requirements, as opposed to a loss of available fuel of (9.1×9,500+1.5×5,400) 94,500 kcal caused by the loss of body fat and proteins", and that this resulted "in a negative balance of some 88,400 kcal, the equivalent of 23 kg of dry wood" that would have to be added to the amount of wood that would have been required to burn the body of a volunteer having its initial weight of 69.4 kg. In the critique (p. 473) I had objected that quantifying the additional wood required to burn an emaciated corpse would have to take into account the weight loss and the impact thereof on the corpse’s calorific value in kCal/kg. On the next page I had presented the following two tables:

Table 2.7 – Tables 8.7 and 8.8 from the critique (p. 474)

The left hand table, 8.7, shows the original weight of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment (MSE) test subjects, broken down into water, fat, protein and other substances according to the ratio applied earlier by Mattogno[172] (64 % water, 14 % fat and 15.3 % proteins, other substances the balance between the sum of these three substances’ weight and the test persons’ original weight of 69.4 kg). I had assumed that burning such corpse on a grid with the method applied by Dr. Lothes & Dr. Profé in their experiments I to III would require wood at a ratio corresponding to the average of these three experiments without considering the tar or resin, i.e. 0.56 kg of wood per kg of corpse or 38.86 kg of wood in total. Considering the calorific value of wood that I understood Mattogno had used in his calculations, 3,843.48 kCal/kg, 0.56 kg of wood would correspond to 2,152.35 kcal, which added to the corpse’s heating value per weight unit (1,525.16 kcal/kg) yields 3,677.51 kCal/kg. This I assumed to be the heating value per weight unit at which the corpse of an MSE volunteer prior to the experiment would combust.

The right hand table, 8.8, shows the weight of an MSE test subject at the end of the experiment, broken down into water, fat, protein and other substances considering the loss in the former three substances during the experiment. The body, weighing 52.60 kg, has a heating value per weight unit of only 330.98 kcal/kg (vs. 1,525.16 kcal/kg prior to the experiment), which means that more wood is required to reach the 3,677.51 kCal/kg required for the corpse’s combustion. The difference being 3,346.53 kcal/kg, the wood is required at a ratio of (3,346.53 ÷ 3,843.48 =) 0.87 kg for each kg of carcass. The total amount of wood required for cremation accordingly rises from 38.86 kg to 45.80 kg, i.e. by 6.94 kg instead of the 23 kg calculated by Mattogno.

Mattogno calls my calculation "completely senseless" on p. 1393, but the reader is required to go through Mattogno’s calculations and explanations to understand what’s supposed to make it so "senseless". On p. 1395 Mattogno argues that my calculation is "invalid" because it rests on the "fundamental presupposition" that "the total heat consumption is directly proportional to the weight of the corpse". Indeed the total heating value of the reaction shown in Table 8.8 (52.60 kg x 3,677.51 kcal/kg = 193,436.96 kcal) stands in about the same relation to the total heating value of the reaction shown in Table 8.7 (105,846.10 kcal + (38.86 kg x 3843.48 kcal/kg = 149,357.63 kcal) = 255,203.73 kcal) as the weight of the body in Table 8.8 (52.60 kg) to the weight of the body in table 8.7 (69.40 kg). However, that was a consequence of my factoring in the weight of the body in calculating the thermal balance required for cremation, instead of ignoring it like Mattogno did. And while my model of direct proportion is a necessarily simplified one for lack of better data on how loss of mass/weight affects the thermal balance, it’s still a better model than one that doesn’t take loss of mass/weight into consideration. The latter is the model that Mattogno proposes. His calculations, in which the invariable is the total heating value of the reaction shown in table 8.7 (255,203.73 kcal), can be visualized in the following table:

By postulating that the amount of energy required to burn an emaciated corpse weighing 52.60 kg is exactly the same as that required to burn a normally fed corpse weighing 69.40 kg, Mattogno raises the wood weight to corpse weight ratio from 0.56 to 1.18, and the absolute amount of fuel required from 38.86 by 23.01 kg to 61.87 kg. Although the body has lost about 24 % of its mass, burning it requires about 59 % more wood.

According to Mattogno’s calculation method, if the body were reduced to half its emaciated weight (26.30 kg) by losing half of each substance that makes up the 52.60 kg, the amount of wood would further increase, as shown in the next table:

This theoretical body weighs only half as much as the body in Table 2.8, the proportion of water, fat, proteins and other substances being the same. And yet burning it would require more wood, according to Mattogno’s calculation method. How can this be?

To highlight the utter absurdity of Mattogno’s calculation method, I repeated the halving operation that led from Table 2.8 to Table 2.9 until the theoretical body weighed a mere 0.82 kg, as shown in the next table:

So the final consequence of Mattogno’s setting the total heating value as an invariable is that 66.33 kg of wood would be required to burn 0.82 kg of corpse.

Mattogno’s alternative calculation method is not much better. He explains it as follows (p. 1396):

Simplifying this, it could also be stated that the above-mentioned theoretical 255,200 kcal are necessary to burn 10.62 kg of protein; the relationship between the total heat and the one produced by protein is of (255,200 ÷ 57,300 =) 4.45; and therefore it results:
((4.45 × 57‚300) + 105‚800) ÷ 3‚843.48 = 38.86 kg of dry wood
analogically, for the body of 52.60 kg it is calculated as:
((4.45 × 49‚250) + 17‚400) ÷ 3‚843.48 = 61.55 kg of dry wood‚
The two calculation methods lead to an almost identical result: 61.87 and 61.55 kg.

The method is difficult to understand as the first division yields not 38.86 but 93.94 kg. The second division, on the other hand, actually yields 61.55 kg. The calculation that Mattogno is proposing is shown in the table below.

The calculations are the following: ((i) ÷ (ii) x (iii)) + (iv) = (v); (v) ÷ (vi) = (vii) = 61.55 kg. The fixed value is the quotient of (i) ÷ (ii). Accordingly the wood weight to carcass weight ratio remains constant at 1.17 regardless of the body weight as long as the proportion between water, fat, proteins and other substances remains the same, as shown in the next table in which every value in Table 2.11 "After MSE" is divided by 2.

Table 2.12 – Mattogno’s alternative calculation method (2)

But what if the proportion between these substances changes? What if, for instance, the body further dehydrates, losing an additional 10 kg of water, while fat and proteins remain the same? In that case we get the results shown in Table 2.13 below.

Table 2.13 – Mattogno’s alternative calculation method (3)

If we compare Table 2.13 with the right half ("After MSE") of Table 2.11, we see that the wood consumption has increased from 61.55 kg to 64.11 kg, and the wood weight to corpse weight ratio has increased from 1.17 to 1.51, even though the body is not only 10 kg lighter but also has a higher heating value per weight unit (640.12 kcal/kg vs. 330.98). This is of course impossible, and such impossibility shows that Mattogno’s calculation method is not sound.

To further illustrate this, Table 2.14 below assumes a total loss of fat while the other substances are the same as in Table 2.11 "After MSE". One would of course expect wood consumption to be higher, but quite the contrary happens:

Table 2.14 – Mattogno’s alternative calculation method (4)

Wood consumption sinks from 61.55 kg to 60.03 kg and the wood weight to corpse weight ratio goes down from 1.17 to 1.15, even though the body has a lower heating value per weight unit (222.32 kcal/kg vs. 330.98 kcal/kg). This cannot possibly be.

An even more bizarre result is obtained in Table 2.15, in which the water content is the same as in 2.11 "After MSE" but fat and proteins are each reduced by half. Wood requirements should increase, but instead they go down from 61.55 kg to a ludicrous 25.87 kg, and the wood weight to corpse weight ratio goes down to 0.54, and that even though the body now has a negative heating value per weight unit (- 212.34 kcal/kg). This is utter nonsense.

Table 2.15 – Mattogno’s alternative calculation method (5)

Both of Mattogno’s calculation methods thus fail to pass the sanity check.

I therefore prefer to stick with my own calculation method, which may be simplified but produces more consistent results than either of Mattogno’s methods.

Notes

[149]Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p.175: "At first an inflammable liquid was poured onto the bodies to help them burn, but later this was considered unnecessary; the SS men in charge of the cremation became convinced that the corpses burned well enough without extra fuel." P.176: "The bodies of victims brought to Treblinka in transports arriving after the body-burning began were taken directly from the gas chambers of the roasters and were not buried in the ditches. These bodies did not burn as well as those removed from the ditches and had to be sprayed with fuel before they would burn."[150] Weliczker, L., Brygada śmierci: Sonderkommando 1005 (Pamiętnik). Centralna Żydowska Komisja
Historyczna w Polsce, Łódź, 1946. [151]"Das kann man nicht erzählen….", p. 95. [152]On p. 1410 of the magnum opus, Mattogno argues as follows regarding the Dresden Altmarkt pyres: "It must be observed that the corpses of Dresden were cremated with clothing, and not naked as the bodies of the alleged gassed. In addition of producing heat, the clothing was impregnated with gasoline as well as body fat, rendering the combustion more efficient."[153]Addressed in the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 1)" [link].[154]The Last Jew, p. 87.[155]MGK, Sobibór, pp. 137f.[156]As I showed in the critique (p. 128 on p. 471), this is not far below the calorific value of coking coal.[157] "burning the dead cattle" ([link]). The video shows a dessicated case burning after having been set on fire with what seems to be a modest amount of gasoline, lit from a safe distance by throwing a burning piece of wood onto the carcass sprinkled with the gasoline. [158]"Elimination of the carcasses of animals that have died from anthrax" ([link]).[159] Quoted in the blog "Belzec Mass Graves and Archaeology: My Response to Carlo Mattogno (4,2)" ([link]). Mattogno’s "lie" accusation was aped by his acolyte Friedrich Jansson, see the blog "On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)" ([link]).[160] See the blog blog "Belzec Mass Graves and Archaeology: My Response to Carlo Mattogno (4,2)" ([link]).[161] The message is quoted in the blog "Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archaeological Research - Part 4 (2)" ([link]). A video available under [link] shows the burning of bones and horns from cattle in Lagos, Nigeria, with what doesn’t look like much external fuel. [162] Same as note 159. [163] "Anthrax" ([link])[164] As note 129. [165] L&P mentioned that they used "a few liters" ("einige Liter") of petroleum as an accelerant in each experiment. I assumed this to mean 5 liters in each case. The Lower Heating Value of crude petroleum, which "is closest to the actual energy yield in most cases", is given as 34,822 Btu in the online table "Liquid Fuel Measurements and Conversions" ([link]). 34,822 Btu correspond to ca. 8,775 kcal. [166] See the blog "Mass Graves and Dead Bodies" ([link]), photos 3.9 to 3.14. [167] MGK, Sobibór, p.138. [168] Available for download as a Word document at [link].[169] See the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 2)" ([link]). At Bełżec it seems that the burning of partially decomposed corpses mixed with sandy soil ("die halb verwesten Leichen, die mit sandiger Erde vermengt waren") on "normal pyres" ("auf normalen Scheiterhaufen") was rather unsuccessful, but the problem was solved when burning on grates made of railway and trolley rails was implemented (Sara Berger, EdV, p. 191). [170] Critique, note 136 on p. 472. [171] MGK, Sobibór, p. 139. [172] MGK, Sobibór, p. 137.